= DEEP PURPLE, apparently.

My Byron from To-kee-yo!

Also: Bela Fleck playing Danse Macabre, the Indiana Jones theme song, and an entire Hammerfall album.

All right, did they cover this stuff at Parenting University?  Did I sleep through that class?  What?  There IS no “Parenting University”??  Well, no wonder this stuff is so hard!

B had a friend over to play today.  We’ll call the friend Wally.  Wally tried to convince B that one of B’s Lego jewels really belonged to Wally, that he’d left it here the last time he was over and recognized it.  Well a) the last time he was here in our apartment was over a year ago, b) one would think that, if this jewel was as important to him as he claimed, I would have received some kind of call from his mother saying, “Did Wally leave his jewel at your house?”, and c) the jewel was indistinguishable from any of B’s other jewels, and not the special, recognizable thing he was claiming.

The story stank.  I said so.  He persisted for a while, realized I wasn’t buying it, and backed down.

B, on the other hand, was furious at me for accusing his friend of lying.  B believed him!  B wanted to give the jewel back!

“Look,” I said, “if you want to give Wally one of your jewels, that’s fine.  But it’s YOURS – yours to give, your choice to make.  Don’t give it to him just because he railroaded you into it.”

B gave Wally the jewel.  Wally told a few other fibs but I was in Mean Mommy Mode and I couldn’t just let them go unchallenged.  “B told me to get the dog wound up!”  Um, NO he didn’t.  “I love cantaloupe so much that one time I ate a cantaloupe VINE!”  Um, NO you didn’t.  “I stole my mom’s coffee this morning and drank it when she wasn’t looking!”  Um… ok, I find that one plausible.

I didn’t tell his mom when she picked him up; I chickened out, partly, but I also didn’t want to bring it up again in front of the boys.  I did e-mail her later.  I may have been too nice, but it’s hard to have to tell someone their offspring has been lying up a storm.

And I did talk more to B about it.  Apparently it is far preferable to be angry with your mother than to entertain the possibility that a friend may have tried to deceive you.  I sympathize.  I do.  Your mother will keep on loving you, even if you’re mad at her; you can’t always say that for a “friend”.

“You can still be Wally’s friend,” I said.  “Everybody makes mistakes.  We can give Wally another chance.  But I think it would be a good idea if you learned to be a little more skeptical of what people tell you.  If someone tells you a story and it just doesn’t seem right, it doesn’t match up with things you know are true, then it’s okay to question it, even if it comes from a friend.”

“I’m going to be skeptical of YOU!” he said, tearfully.

And you know what?  GOOD.  I’m not infallible.  I’m not even sure I handled this right.  He’s got to start somewhere, even if it breaks my heart that he should have to learn this lesson at all.

* You wish you knew more about my fabulous RPG world, don’t you!  Well never fret, my ever-vigilant players (or one of them, anyway) pointed me to Obsidian Portal, where I’ve been merrily creating a Maravenna wiki.  It turns out making all the silly wiki interconnections is WAY FUN.  It’s not done yet, by any means – I have two players who still haven’t put their characters on – but you can get a feel for how obsessed I am with NPCs.  The answer: VERY.

* We continue German Fun Days by trying German recipes!  Today for lunch we had an apple pancake.  It was like the illicit love child of apple pie and an omelet.  Wrong, so very very wrong, and yet completely delicious.

* We took the dog out for a run.  Now to run Byron, or bike him as the case may be.  He spent nearly an hour on his bike yesterday.  At this rate, he’s going to be able to out-RUN me too, and have freaky leg-muscles like that dude in “The Triplets of Belleville”.  But that’s ok.  My child, more athletic than me, can only be a good thing.

Byron’s interests connect one to the next, like beads on a necklace.  Here’s one current string (not the only one by any means): physics -> atoms -> nuclear bombs -> WWII -> Germany.  From here, who knows, although it will be perfectly obvious in retrospect.

He’s never shown any interest in languages, but then, all the languages we’ve (mildly) suggested – Japanese, Irish, Greek, French – were languages of our choosing, not his.  He announced the other day that he wants to learn German.  GOOD, I say, let’s do it.  I check out two DVDs from the library, and he balks until he actually watches them.  Then he can’t get enough.  There’s this loopy animated dog on the videos, which for some reason really has his number.  He’s jumping up and down the whole time.

They’re pretty simple, these two videos.  Greetings, colours, telling time, that kind of thing.  He’s going to want something more substantial soon.  We’ll have to go visit my cousin in Seattle, at the very least: her husband is German (and a veritable kid-magnet, from what I’ve seen), and she lived there for five years herself.

That is, assuming this interest lasts.  We may be on to lace-making next week.  It can be hard to predict.

As you may recall, I’m DMing an RPG.  I mentioned that many months ago, but declined to say too much about it, largely because I am a TERRIBLE one for spoilers.  Just terrible.  My own players laugh at me, in-game, because I give stuff away.  I’m working really hard to get better about this, but it’s just my nature to be a blabbermouth, it seems.

So I didn’t want to talk too much here because two of my players read this blog regularly, and another two read occasionally, and there was just too much opportunity for me to divulge secrets.  However, now that we are many sessions in, I think I can at least tell you all what’s happened so far.

The game is set in the city of Maravenna, at the crossing of the major north-south river and the major east-west trade road.  There’s been settlement here for a couple thousand years, though not continuously, and the new has been built on top of the old for nearly that long.  There is layer upon layer of undercity, to say nothing of all the squabbling and politics up top.  I figured this would provide players with plenty of choices.

The city was ruled until recently by the tiefling lord Hars III, who was so nasty that all the neighbourhood bosses put aside their quarrels just to band together and depose him.  Garolina Cardsharp, boss of the Ratsuckle neighbourhood, became ruler of the city – by virtue of her having been the one to personally skewer Hars III – and you will call her Countess Garolina now, if you know what’s good for you.  She’s ruled for only a few months, but complications are cropping up.  An undead outbreak is plaguing the city, and the precarious peace between the halfling and half-elf gangs seems on the verge of collapse.

That collapse is partially the fault of one of my players, Amara, niece of the halfling boss Mungo Halfprise.  She was charged with giving Shuque Mandingo, the half-elf leader, the monthly love potion that was keeping him docile and tractable.  A very unfortunate roll resulted in his missing a dose, and now he seems bent on making up for lost stabbing time.  Oops.

Meanwhile, the dwarf gangs also seem to be up to something, smuggling antiquities out of the city.  My party “liberated” a few and ended up with the talking head of an ancient and ill-tempered golem.  Later they found her hands, which can crawl around by themselves.  The golem appears to have been the servant of an ancient tiefling sorceress, Menippa, whose secrets have been lost underneath the city somewhere.

The golem head (and hands) are not the only unruly body parts in the city.  In the Temple District stands a very ancient temple which predates every other standing building in the city.  It’s called Temple of the Unknown God, although they have had to revise that name recently because the god(ess) appears to have hit puberty and grown breasts.  It has drapery across its lap and no head – how was anyone supposed to know?  Nobody quite knows what’s up with that.

There’s also a head with legs called The Gryllus that keeps showing up.  It features as a mythical bogeyman in halfling nursery-rhymes, in a cult-symbol scratched on walls, and then there was a little stone Gryllus in the basement of the museum.  It was guarded by the skull (Jethro) of a dead dwarven wizard; unfortunately, he was a lousy guardian – or maybe just easily beguiled by the friendly persuasion of our bard, Adrie.  He allowed Adrie to pull the lever labeled “Pull to end world”.  She left the Gryllus where it was, but Jethro is now in jail.

The characters are:

Adrie: half-elf bard, cousin of Shuque Mandingo, practical and persuasive, hoping to distance herself from her family, has it in for the undead

Amara: halfling rogue, niece of Mungo Halfprise, happy to continue or even expand the family crime business, if there’s profit (or even just random amusement) in it

Elion: human mage, highly ethical, loves discovering arcane lore so much he’s willing to put up with this bunch of sociopaths just to get it

Xune: dragonborn fighter, inadvertently funny, an impenetrable wall of good-natured fighting power

Belestros: tiefling warlock, almost certainly evil, seeking the remnants of an ancient tiefling empire, or at the very least something to kill.

And me, of course, the DM who can never quite remember the rules of combat, has an odd fixation with severed heads (apparently), brings in more NPCs than she can keep track of (it’s particularly awkward when they start talking to each other), and loves nothing more than to sit down and make up halfling folk-songs and other ridiculous details to burden her players with.

For people who are doing nothing, we sure do seem to keep busy – and yet get nothing done!  It’s the paradox of summertime, I suppose.

Today we took the dog to the dog park, got groceries, practiced the bike in the schoolyard (a truly clever place to ride it, it turns out.  You can practice steering and braking without any danger from moving cars or pedestrians), and then what?  I dunno, and yet here we are, day pretty much gone.

I’m making tacos and listening to Chris Squire’s “Fish Out of Water” — something I’ve been meaning to write an entire blog entry about, sometime.  Byron is drawing Dragon Age inspired pictures and talking ceaselessly; I can’t work out whether he thinks I’m listening.  The dog is napping.  It’s not overly hot.

I’m enjoying summer more than I thought I would.

Byron’s ability to ride his bike is rapidly outstripping my ability to keep up with him, running.  It’s not that he goes faster than I can run, usually, but that he goes on and on and I just don’t have the stamina.  Months of walking this dog have made me a very good walker, but that doesn’t translate to able runner.

He’s ridden three days with the training wheels off.  The first day he mastered balance; on the second, he learned to start himself up; today he’s begun to work out how to steer (although he still over-compensates a bit).  Now he just needs to learn to stop.  I’m going to keep being anxious until he does.

We practice in the alleys, mostly, because they’re fairly traffic-free and they’re nice and wide.  Not as many parked cars to run into.

Yesterday was the first day Scott got to see him ride, and it was really something to see how proud Byron was to show off his skills to Dad.  It’s always a wonder to watch his face when he rides; he’s just exhilarated.  As he rode past the corner cafe, the patrons cheered him on.

Today there was an old homeless guy sitting in the alley, toothless and jabbering to himself.  He made me nervous, not because he was dangerous in any way but because I could just see Byron running into him.  Today was steering-day, however, and Byron sailed on by without even coming close.

“You’re a good mother!” the homeless guy shouted after me.  “An excellent mother!”

“Thank you!” I puffed, running past.

And he kept shouting.  I could still hear him, a block and a half away: “THAT’s what we call a GOOD MOTHER!!”

I’ll take that.  And some ibuprofin, thanks.

I don’t care what Rotten Tomatoes says!  Agora was brilliant, and is the best movie I’ve seen in a long time.  I thought it was moving, thoughtful, and surprisingly even-handed, with complicated characters and wonderful visuals.  Critics are berating it for lack of subtlety – maybe.  But what it lacks in subtlety, it makes up for in clarity and complexity, laying bare the agonizing decisions people are forced to make between love and conviction, truth and expediency.

It’s the story of Hypatia of Alexandria, a mathematician and astronomer – in an era where women were never either of those things – who was killed by a Christian mob in the year 415.

Spoilers abound beyond this point, me hearties!

read more from "Agora!"

We finally see Agora!  We’ve been anticipating this movie for a long time, and it’s only here briefly, so this is very exciting.

And thanks, Arwen, for being able to take Byron on short notice when my stable of babysitters couldn’t help me (most of them never even called me back, but they may be on vacation)!  I momentarily considered taking Byron along – he’s a classicist-in-training, after all – but Scott reminded me that the main character is going to be tortured.  Oops.  That won’t do at all.

Scott’s back from Japan today.  He’d scarcely gotten over his jet lag from Greece when he had to turn right around and go to Japan for some meetings, poor sweetie.  It was a five day trip, which will really set the dials of your internal clock a-spinnin’.  Well, unless your internal clock is digital.  I feel reasonably sure mine isn’t.

However, Scott has done fairly well today – hasn’t even taken a nap – and we’re chalking it up to one thing: the video game “Dragon Age”.

I don’t know what it is about that game, but we are both completely engrossed by it.  It’s just your basic sword and sorcery fantasygame.  Hack and slash!  Kill the monsters!  Save the day!  Get the treasure!  Romance your party members!

No, really.  It’s pretty funny.  Somebody had way way WAY too much fun with the characters, and their personalities, and how you can influence them.  I’ve never seen a game where the characters were such individuals, and where so much story hung upon your relationships with them.  There are little side plots that you can only uncover by getting your party members to like you enough.  And then, of course, you can also seduce them, cheat on them, betray them, buy them off with gifts, broker peace or make them hate each other.  You can be completely manipulative without hurting any real person’s real feelings.  It’s awesome.

I got my first inkling of this within the first five minutes of play.  I chose to be a dwarf princess, of all things, and my “First” – who was supposed to be my general, I guess?  My right-hand dwarf, so to speak – was helping me put my armour on.  He said something like, “I take it you’re going for the Fearsome Warrior look and not Paragon of Beauty.”

I then had a multiple-choice decision.  The replies were something like: “Beauty is not as important as strength”; “Stop kidding around”; “I should have you beaten for speaking to me like that”;  and “Close that door and I’ll show you Paragon of Beauty!”

That last one made me laugh, so of course it won, and that set the entire tone for my relationship with this other dwarf.  He could have been my servant, but I chose paramour.  We were both exiled – he to the surface and me to the monster-riddled deeps – and the only thing that made it bearable was the idea that if I survived, he’d be waiting for me in the capital city.  I fought long and hard, and finally made it, only to discover that he had married someone else, believing me dead.  *sob!*  He broke my little dwarven heart!

And made me laugh at the same time.  This is like an insanely elaborate choose-your-own-adventure story.  You push against this world and it pushes back.  Right now I am dallying with the bastard-prince-knight-errant character (and he’s a notary!), who is sweet but kind of dull.  I considered switching to the assassin-elf, but he’s kind of a sleaze.  I’d really like to go for the big Klingon-like monster dude, not because he’s awesome, but because he’s a challenge, but I’m beginning to think it isn’t going to be an option.  Are you not supposed to want the monster dude?  Why not?  Somebody needs to set those game-creators straight.

Oh, and I think there’s a plot.  Quest.  Thingy.  I dunno.  I kill the monsters just to have more to talk about with my virtual comrades.